HiveStopped
by TheDeerCat
Summary: A short story set in an AU where the events of Hiveswap don't take place until 2001.
1. Prologue

"Hey sis, what's your opinion on butlers?"

I was speechless as I tried to figure out exactly what I had just been asked upon answering my cell phone.

"What do you mean… like... in general?" I finally managed to muster.

"Not exactly, I was talking with some guys on a forum and you know how certain males have a "thing" for maids… well we were wondering if the same was true for women and butlers… so how about it Sis… butlers do anything for you?"

Saturday, 9:05 PM, the 23rd of June, 2001. It was a comfortingly warm summer night, the kind you get nostalgic for the second winter comes around. On a night like this the majority of twenty-one year old girls attending college are probably either out partying or at the very least studying. You know things that are considered either fun or productive. Apparently, I did not exist among the echelon of society, known as the majority of twenty-one year old girls attending college because I was doing neither of the aforementioned activities.

No, on this quaint summer night I, Joey Claire was sitting in my abandoned dorm room, being interrogated by my seventeen year old brother, Jude, as to whether butlers "Did anything for me". It was even complete with a set of incredibly audible scare quotes.

"I probably shouldn't even justify this line of questioning with an answer..."

I took a deep sigh, as vaguely uncomfortable as this was it was still more interesting than just sitting around procrastinating.

"However... since you went to all the trouble of calling me on this busy friday night, I'll have you know that while, like most people, I do appreciate the idea of being served and made to feel important, the platonic ideal of a butler does very little for me in terms of romantic intrigue nor does the outfit convey some innate sense of sensuality in itself. In short, I can't say I entirely see the appeal of a butler outside of the obvious practical benefits."

As I stopped talking I came to the slightly embarrassing realisation that my grandiose hand gestures were being lost on the cellphone's tiny microphone. It was a good thing that everybody I shared the dorm with had a more active social life than me. If they, hell if anybody was privy to the notion of me making an impassioned rant on the supposed appeal of butlers to a 17 year old boy, I'd probably want to curl up into a little ball of shame until the end of days finally came to take me out of my misery.

Jude was silent for a second. I could have sworn I heard the faint sound of a pencil writing on paper in the background.

"Hmm… not quite what I expected considering the kind of person you are..."

What kind of person did he think I was!?

"Nevertheless..." He continued. "This data should be integral when pooled with that of my peers. Thank you for your time, I hope I wasn't keeping you away from anything important. Looking forward to your next visit back home, Over and out."

And like that, before I could even say goodbye, he'd hung up. I started to wonder, how many other women had fell victim to Jude & Co.'s house assistant-based inquisition. He wasn't exactly the kind of person you'd expect to have a lot of female friends. Was I his only first hand source?

In all honesty, I was starting to question the scientific Integrity of this study...

To top it all off though was the casually inserted radio sign off used to end the call. Back when we were both younger Jude communicated almost entirely in that way, using overly rigid terminology originating from military agents involved in espionage, and well despite my heavily biased angle I had to admit it. He'd come a long way from that, in fact in a few more years he might even be comprehensible to your average human being.

I tried to imagine a socially adjusted version of Jude Harley, chuckling to myself.

As I did this, my finger began unconsciously rotating around the spiral pattern of the key shaped object attached to a chain around my neck.

Blissfully unaware of what the peculiar green object had in store for me…


	2. Jude's Request

The wheels were finally set in motion about a month later, a Thursday if I recall correctly. It was almost 11 PM, I was resting on my bed, doing some light reading when once again my cellular phone lit up with a familiar number.

Another call from Jude, this time with an even more peculiar premise.

"You should come home tomorrow instead." He began talking as soon as I picked up the phone. This was curt, even for him.

"Well hello to you as well Jude... " I began as sarcastically as possible. "... and pray do tell, why is it that I should make such haste towards home?"

"It's something really important, it would be optimal if you left as soon as possible." The fact that I hadn't lead with a definitive "Okay" seemed to have distressed him, his voice was somehow even more shaky than usual and he had completely ignored my facetious word choice.

"Jude please, what could possibly be so important that it can't wait a single day!?" I sighed with enough exasperation to justify an exclamation point.

"It's not something I can say over the phone…" Now there was a line I hadn't heard in a few years, back in his heyday of pure teenage neuroticism this was essentially code for paranoid conspiracy theories going wild. I was beginning to suspect my assessment of his social progress after the previous conversation was misplaced.

I sighed again, with only slightly less exasperation.

There was an awkward silence. "...If you've already booked your ticket or it's a matter of money, I can reimburse whatever you spend to get here sooner."

Now this was unprecedented. Jude Harley, the boy who had on multiple occasions chastised cashiers for depriving him of as little as 25 cents in change, was willing to part with his hard earned cash. Surely this was his bizarre idea of a joke?

"Are you serious?" I asked with as much earnestness as I could muster.

"Yes Joey. I'm serious." His voice sounded like he wished he wasn't.

There was clearly more to this than conspiracy theory fueled insanity. Jude was acting strange. Hell he was basically competing with all the benchmarks for the strangest behaviors I'd ever witnessed(all of which were set by him). Fortunately as of the call I was yet to actually make my travel arrangements(three for procrastination) and so I finally answered…

"Okay, Jude, I'll be home as soon as I can."

I heard a faint sigh of relief, but there was still a hint of tension in his voice.

"Uh… Joey… you still take Mom's heirloom with you everywhere you travel right?"

"Yeah..." I liked to feel that I at least had some connection left to her in my life.

"Good, make sure you bring it with you. See you soon. Over and out."

I found that last request dwelling on my mind. What could Jude have possibly wanted with the heirloom? My eyes shifted down to the object held in my left hand. I usually kept it tied to a chain around my neck, but when my brain was occupied by tasks like this phone call, the inexplicably foreign looking object usually found it's way into my hand.

It felt like metal to touch but looked almost like plastic. A dark yet rich green key, with bizzare serpents etched into the outskirts of the handle. At the center of said handle was a hypnotic inward spiral pattern of bright red and green. All in all the heirloom looked not of this world, kind of like the way a prop looks out of place in a low budget 80's horror film. The difference was that while a bad prop broke your belief in it's credibility, the combined tangibility and aura of this object made the rest of the world seem out of place instead.

As my mind finally wandered from the key, I found myself feeling a strange sense of unease about the previous conversation. As much as I tried to sweep it under the rug of his eccentric demeanor, Jude seemed genuinely concerned about something during the conversation. I tried ruminating on what that something could possibly be but continued to draw blanks.

Eventually I decided to put on some music to try and quell what was becoming a subtle anxiety in the back of my mind. I swiveled my body to reach the small pile of compact discs beside the player on my bedside table. Apart from the couple of albums by Kate Bush I'd had since I was a kid, the vast majority of music I listened to was lent to me be a girl I roomed with called Sarah.

Being in a small college town had its perks, one of which being that almost every weekend some upcoming band would be playing in a small bar or club nearby. This made perfect sense as this town bolstered a seemingly unending army of apathetic students and to an upcoming band something like that is just a few T-shirts away from a seemingly unending army of apathetic students who sometimes wear your T-shirts.

At the very least their prayers seemed to have been answered with Sarah, who made a point to go to every show she could, usually returning with a backpack full of such T-shirts and some CD's of varying quality. Of these CD's any baring the much sought after approval of Sarah would usually find their way into my player at least once.

The two most intriguing contenders of the current roster were an album by a band called Cursive and an album that just said "Jimmy Eat " on it. I couldn't tell which was the band name.

Sarah had told me about the Cursive album's confrontational vibe and I could almost feel it radiating off the cover, two lovers clasped in an embrace but with one looking coldly into the distance. Probably an interesting listen but not one for my current mental state.

I went out on a limb and put the other one into the CD player. Sarah hadn't mentioned anything about it so I was hoping it wouldn't be too intense for me to relax to. Thankfully it was perfect.

The album opened with what sounded like a quiet organ in the background as drums, vocals and a simple guitar arpeggio delicately created a dream-like atmosphere. I could immediately feel my uneasy feelings dissipate. Yet, I couldn't help but wonder why Jude had even wanted me to come so soon, chuckling to myself I pondered that maybe one of his theories had actually turned out to be true for once.

If only I'd known how correct I actually was...


	3. Hauntswitch

I continued to intermittently analyse the key, even hours later as the taxi I rode in finally pulled onto the main street of Hauntswitch. As I looked up all thoughts were momentarily replaced by a pure nostalgia for the quaint town I had grown up in.

The mind has a way of reverting to a certain mode of thought when you return to a place that holds a lot of memories and as my view through the window panned across the rustic scenery I could feel this process in it's full effect. While my exterior portrayed the sensible college student deep down I could feel the hint of a certain fourteen year old know-it-all getting excited to finally be where she belonged.

If you somehow failed to notice the powerlines or the occasional modern building, I wouldn't blame you for thinking you'd travelled through time upon entering Hauntswitch. Federal style architecture lined the streets with single words signifying businesses like butcher, florist and post office. It was jarring to be reminded of time before ultra competitive capitalism, where you could get away with such simple branding. The cherry on top though were the trees, towering over front lawns, tucked in between buildings and in the far off distance gradually swallowing the roads.

This was the kind of town you could lose yourself in and just wander aimlessly through brickwork and leaves. More importantly however, this was the type of town you could live and breath in. Everything was neatly but generously spaced, with no buildings crammed in to make the most of the real estate. Everything here had found its place here and it gave off the feeling that you to could find yours too.

After a couple of twists and turns the cab found itself on the laneway heading up to the immense building I had always thought of as home, Half-Harley Manor. The building's proper name was just Harley Manor but following the decision in my youth to take my mother's last name, Jude and I took to referring to it in a way that better reflected its inhabitants, at least while Pa wasn't home, he usually wasn't…

From the outside, the manor looked deceptively small despite being two stories tall. Earthly coloured bricks with all sorts of vines crawling up the side. In a way it looked as if the the vines where dragging the rest of the building down instead of crawling upwards, like nature itself was reaching to take back it's precious resources.

After paying the driver I exited the taxi and began walking briskly to the front porch. I was halfway there when I felt a vibration from my phone./

"Doors unlocked meet me in my room."

He could've at least said hello...

Just as Jude said the glass door to the house opened without a hitch, I walked in thinking about how I was going to chastise him for leaving a house full of expensive possessions unlocked when I heard a mechanical clicking sound behind me. I turned around to see that where once underneath the doorknob had been a keyhole was now a strange steel box with a single red LED light flashing in the centre.

I could only assume that Jude had taken it upon himself to fit some sort of state of the art locking system onto the door, while I suppose I was just saying he was too careless something about this seemed like overkill. Speaking of overkill, the seemingly brand new surveillance camera in the top corner of the room definitely qualified as well. How paranoid can a guy be?

Not that I could really bring myself to blame Jude. Ever since I shipped off for higher education he'd practically had the place to himself. Sure he'd probably have friends around occasionally and maybe once every six months or so Pa might be around for a day or two, but still, I'm sure spending that much time alone in a house as big as this could make anyone feel a little paranoid.

I made my way through the cluttered front room towards the stars in the corner to the left, in all honesty I couldn't tell if the room had more or less old junk in it since the last time I was there. Pa had always had a nasty habit of bringing large extravagant items back from his trips around the globe and just letting them pile up throughout the house, in our childhoods Jude and I unfortunately took after him in this way, at least in terms of letting things pile up. While I had grown out of it, I wasn't sure how Jude would approach distributing his possessions throughout the large manor he now solely occupied. I still wasn't sure, somewhere along the way his weird conspiracy related objects of intrigue and Pa's elaborate memorabilia became indistinguishable to me.

All I could say for sure as I made my way up the regal looking staircase into a just as, if not more cluttered hallway, was that finding any one specific object in this house would be near impossible. It was almost as if someone had designed this all to be some elaborate Where's Waldo-esque puzzle or some late 90's point and click adventure throwback.

"WARNING", "KEEP OUT" and "DO NOT ENTER" these were but a few of the varied signs Jude had stuck to the front of the door to his room, those and a simple drawing of Flatwoods Monster(I only knew that one because Jude would always smugly point it out). Though I knew I couldn't have, I'd soon begin to wish that I had taken the warning signs advice.

"WHAT WERE THE EXACT WORDS I USED TO INITIATE OUR CONVERSATION ABOUT BUTLERS ON THE 23RD OF JUNE, 2001?"

Jude sat in his computer chair, screaming his demand while holding a flare gun towards me.

"Hey ju-JESUS CHRIST POINT THAT THING AWAY FROM ME!." He did not.

The lanky dork brushed a strand of greasy black hair away from his eyes and pushed his glasses up his nose with a pointed index finger. He then began to chuckle to himself, and spoke calmly and slowly. Almost as if he hadn't been screaming in panic a mere second ago.

"Heh heh heh… not so fast Sis, if that IS your real name…"

"But that's not even my real na-" He cut me off.

"How am I supposed to know you're really my sister… who's name is Joey Claire…"

Wow, was that supposed to cover up for the fact that he muddled his line before?

"Please dear sister, do tell me, how did I start our conversation about butlers?"

Spoken like a true super villain, wait a minute wasn't speaking in a needlessly fanciful way MY thing? Either way I thought back to that conversation as hard as I could and then replied…

"I dunno was it, 'Hey sis, what's your opinion on butlers?"

"Wrong!" Jude made an incorrect game show buzzer noise with his mouth and then continued.

"I said, YO sis, what's your opinion on butlers?'"

"What? No you didn't!" I could've sworn I was right if only I could somehow go back and check… as I ran the scene over in my mind my hand reached for the green key around my neck.

Finally I spoke again.

"What difference does it even make? Even if someone had listened into our conversation to know it as closely as I did, wouldn't they still be able to fool you anyway?"

"...crap I think you're right...oh well" He tossed the flare gun carelessly onto his bed.

"Jude what the hell!? What if it went off!?"

"Calm down, it's not like it was loaded."


	4. The Creeping Sculpture

Whatever the thing was it was massive. It looked like some sort of sculpture or statue standing from the floor to just below the ceiling of the manor's spacious attic. Each side had an almost identical, giant carving of some sort of snake or dragon, the difference being on the right side the eyes were a bloody crimson and on the left a vibrant green. Above each set of eyes was a single spiral pattern matching the respective side's color. In the middle was giant circular plate of metal, with a lone keyhole in the center.

Needless to say the colors of each side if put together would match the key shaped heirloom my mother had left me, not only that, the entirety of the immense object seemed to carry the same otherworldly vibe. I almost would have been tempted to pull the key out then and there to try and open whatever was in the center. But I didn't have it.

"Leave the heirloom in here." Jude had said, just before we came up here. He was holding a tiny metal safe.

"W-why?" My voice was breaking a little, a mixture of concern and confusion. "You know I don't like to be apart from it."

"Oh right… of course." He looked as if he was trying to solve some math equation in his head.

"Okay then... can you just place it on the desk in front of me?" I didn't move. "I won't touch it Sis, I promise." He quickly added.

He seemed sincere so I saw no harm in at least humoring this request, also I have to admit the way he was acting made me quite curious as to what exactly he was trying to accomplish. I placed the key on the desk and we both stared at it expectantly.

It was then that it started to move.

Not quickly,

not forcefully,

but irrefutably nonetheless.

It was slowly creeping towards the edge of the desk. It was as if some invisible person was pulling it by a thin string or holding a weak magnet in front of it.

"Hmm… just as I thought, fortunately from this distance it seems to only move horizontally at best." Jude pontificated, twirling a strand of greasy hair.

"What are you talking about? This can't be normal? Why's it doing that!?" By the last question the sight of the autonomously moving key was beginning to make me feel a little bit uneasy.

"I can't say for sure." Jude said, in what I assumed was response to my last question. "But 'Mysterious Object 116' has been acting in a similar way so I thought this might be the case."

'Mysterious Object 116' I'd never heard of it, I was aware that Jude assigned names like that to any of the previously mentioned weird junk he happened to collect but last time I had checked his list had ended at 110.

"What is Mysterious Object 116?". I asked

"It's in the attic, I'll show you…" he stated. "But first…" he once again picked up the small safe.

This time I cautiously put the heirloom in.

That was how Jude and myself had come to be standing in the attic, looking at the large peculiar sculpture.

Jude was standing next to it, pointing to a small piece of masking tape on the ground at the foot of the object.

"It hasn't been very far or fast but it's definitely been moving as well."

Surely enough, the sculpture stood almost 2 inches from where the tape was, a noticeable lack of dust covered the area behind it, implying space it had previous occupied. It didn't seem to be moving at all though, If I hadn't witnessed the heirloom moving before, I'd almost think Jude had just pushed it forward at some point before showing me. If this thing was moving it was too slow to even detect without measuring.

"This is creepy." I stated as a matter of fact.

"It's also fascinating..." Jude replied. "At first I couldn't tell why it seemed to arbitrarily move in a south-western direction, it seemed entirely random, but then I remembered where I'd seen the markings on it before."

He looked like he was either trying to force a smile or hold one back.

"Surely enough it was moving in the exact direction of the college you were at, it was moving towards the key…"

"This is REALLY creepy..." I stated as even more of a matter of fact.

It sincerely was, the knowledge that this strange serpentine statue was slowly creeping its way toward my location, not very fast but always moving and always knowing exactly where the heirloom and myself were. It sent a shiver went down my spine.

Learning such a fact in the manor's cobweb filled attic certainly didn't help.

"Where'd you find this thing anyway?" I finally asked, after a minute of processing the situation.

"I didn't..." Jude answered, patting the nearest serpent statue. "Pa did."

That was even more surprising, this didn't seem like the type of thing Pa would bring home, sure he had brought home statues and idols before but they always held a certain "old worldly" charm to them and you could usually tell what culture or time they came from. This thing didn't even feel like it belonged to any culture or time, I'd ever heard of.

"So what... did he bring it with him last time he was here or something?"

Jude shook his head. "Not at all, I discovered it up here just before his last visit and immediately asked him about when he showed up. He didn't remember what it was, let alone where or when he got it." Jude's voice took a curious tone. "He just said it'd always been up here."

How delightfully ominous...

By the time I had been fully briefed on the sculpture, the sun was beginning to set. After once again returning the key from the small safe to its usual place around my neck I began walking to the old room I had always slept in.

"I'll be in my room if you need me, college has not been kind to my sleep pattern..." I said through a yawn to my brother, as he handed me the prized possession.

"Got it, while you get your R&R, I'm gonna make a plan of attack for experimenting with 116." His nasally voice was charged with energy, I suspected our bodies were operating on two completely separate ends of a spectrum.

Despite the eerie things I had learned, I found a warm wave of nostalgia coming across my body as I layed in the room I had spent the majority of my childhood in. While the numerous toys that once littered the carpeted floor had been put away long ago, the array of dorky posters that I could just never bring myself to take down were still there to remind me of much simpler times.

I soon found myself drifting off, it was sudden but I figured I might as well get all the sleep I could, not knowing what Jude might have in store.

I must have been way more exhausted than I knew, I didn't even think to change out of the clothes I had worn all day up until that point.

I didn't even think to remove the key from around my neck…


End file.
